Academy Voting Process Updated

When AMPAS announced the expansion of its slate of Best Picture nominees to 10, I wondered if it would affect the voting process and how. Well, it has, and here's how, from Living in Cinema:

"Instead of just voting for one nominee, the way Academy members have almost
always done on the final ballot, voters will be asked to rank all 10 nominees in
order of preference — and the results will be tallied using the complicated
preferential system, which has been used for decades during the nominating
process but almost never on the final ballot.

As a result, a film could be the first choice of the largest number of voters, but find itself nudged out of the top prize by another movie that got fewer number one votes but more twos and threes.

It sounds crazy, but there’s good reason to make the change at a time when dividing the vote among an expanded slate of 10 nominees could otherwise allow a film to win with fewer than 1,000 votes (out of the nearly 6,000 voting members)."

Read the rest over at LiC. The official rules are a bit complicated, but I actually think it's an okay change. Obviously my opinion on that could change next March, depending on how it all turns out. We can say one thing for the upcoming Oscar season. It will definitely be a more exciting game than last year, when no one (NO ONE) was betting against Slumdog Millionaire.